how ruthless are the gentle--
by moirariordan
Summary: "Yeah," Sara says, and shrugs. (post ep for 2.13, oliver/sara)


Oliver hasn't had sex like this in years; they fuck for hours. _Hours_, until their hands shake, until they can't hold themselves up. Sara cries when she comes, holding his head between her legs with her thighs, squeezing so hard he stops breathing, and Oliver can hear her, feel her sobbing, can picture what her mouth looks like, torn in two by her teeth and crooked with anguish. When he finally pulls away he sees blinking black spots and Sara, biting her knuckles, her whole body, trembling against his.

After, he holds her and thinks, _maybe we deserve this._ Thinks, _if anyone could understand, it's her._

"I dreamt about you so many times," Sara tells him, pressing her fingers to his face like a blind woman, tracing a picture in her head with her hands. "Before, after. When you came back, it was all over the news, even where I was, and it was so much harder not to call you than it was not to call my family...that's horrible. I know that's horrible."

"No, it's not." Oliver remembers going home after that first night, finding out she was alive, breaking the bathroom mirror with his fist and then crawling around on his hands and knees, picking up the glass so Raisa wouldn't find out in the morning. "I know what you mean."

"Nyssa knew. She always knew. I thought she understood, but...her whole life was in the League. She _is _the League. She couldn't understand, not really."

Oliver presses his mouth to her shoulder, holds her a little tighter. He can feel her stomach moving as she talks.

"I don't know." Sara sighs, arching her back, letting her hands fall back to the mat. "I don't want to think anymore."

"Then let's not think," Oliver says. "Let's just fucking - not think for awhile."

She smiles up at him, wry and with a spark of old, Sara humor. Leaning against the door of his dorm room, asking him if her big sister's tired him out too much to go see a goddamn movie with her or what, bouncing around the dance floor at a party, grinning so wide the whole room watches, hopping into the backseat of his car and laughing, asking him _what do you think of my bangs? Hey Ollie, hey Ollie, come sit back here with me, I've got a secret to tell you._

"Fucking, not thinking?"

"Exactly." Oliver says it into her neck, holding her breasts in his hands and thinking about pulling her up again, pushing her up against the wall maybe, or turning her over and getting her on her knees. There's so many things they can do, he realizes, feeling sort of giddy about it. Sex things, that he's forgotten about. Some things that he'd only do with Sara, some things that only Sara would find pleasure in.

"I could be amenable to that," she says, and it's so lovely to hear her voice like that again. Warm and throaty and playful, not the stiff, dead thing she uses when talking about the League, or her family. "You know what I like, after all, and I definitely know what you like - "

"Hey now," Oliver says, lifting his hips away from the dangerous angle of her knee, "watch the equipment."

Sara responds by swinging her leg around his waist and flipping him onto his back effortlessly, slamming his hips to the mat with hers and grinning in triumph.

"See," she says, looking briefly over her shoulder, turning back to give him an eyebrow, a little scoot-scoot motion that makes him gasp, "I know what you _like_."

"...unfair advantage."

She scoffs. "Since when do you and I play fair?"

Since never. "Okay," Oliver says, letting her get comfortable, enjoying the way her legs flex under his hands, how wet she is against his stomach. He's going to fuck her again, he decides, and he'll ask her to hold him down while they do it. "Okay."

Her face is shadowed in the dim light, and when she leans forward it's like looking at two different versions of her, Sara from before, Sara from after. Sara, his Sara, pulling off her dress on the yacht, telling him, _saw this and thought of you._

"Thanks, for this," she says, and kisses him on the mouth, short and sweet. He doesn't respond at first, a little overwhelmed.

"For what? Sex?"

"No." She dips her head, and he takes the opportunity to touch her hair, like he's been wanting to since she came back. Longer than that, maybe. "Well, maybe. But also, just, you know. Being alive."

"I could say the same thing to you."

"Hmm."

They kiss again; Oliver thinks, _I could kiss her for hours, I would be happy with just kissing_. Kissing Sara has always been like that.

"This is probably a bad idea," he says when she pulls back. Her lip's still bleeding. Her blood is in his mouth.

"Yeah," Sara says, and shrugs.

* * *

When Oliver was 23 and Sara was 20, they went to a street carnival together. Laurel pushed them to go, all big smile and hopeful eyes, _my boyfriend and my sister should be friends! You have so much in common, guys, you should totally hang out! _Oliver went, because he'd always thought Sara was cool. The first thing she did when they got there was pickpocket his wallet to buy herself cotton candy.

They had sex for the first time that night, in an alleyway behind the ferris wheel, while Laurel sat at home and studied for finals. Then again, in the backseat of his car, in the parking lot. Afterwards she told him it was the first time any guy had gone down on her, and so he'd told her, "I'll do it again, and teach you how good it feels."

(At their core, Oliver wonders if they both don't enjoy it a little bit - being selfish. Wonders, _if we cared less, would everything be easier?_)

There came a certain point, on the island, where Oliver stopped having the capacity to feel guilt anymore, or sadness, where everything sort of thinned out to a cold sort of ruthless clarity. The fog of caring came back later, of course, after he returned, but maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe if you reached inside his heart and pulled out all the parts and laid them out side by side, you'd find more empty pieces than full ones. Maybe when you live like that for so long, hollowed out and patched together, that's just...what you get.

Maybe when all of that shit broke, he lost the parts that made it real. He certainly feels like that's true, most days.

There are simple truths and there are complicated ones - loving Laurel was always complicated. But loving Sara? That was simple. He wanted, she wanted. He took, she took. He fought, she fought. They bled, they died.

Maybe it was selfish, maybe it still is. Oliver thinks the part of his heart dedicated to caring is probably empty.

* * *

Felicity comes upon them the next morning, her arms full of food and a backpack hanging from one elbow. Sara rushes up from her seat to help her, smiling that pleased little smile she gets around Felicity. Everyone has that smile, around Felicity.

"Thought you might need some supplies," Felicity says kindly, a transplant from a cleaner, more organized world. Oliver takes the tray of coffee from her - they're even labeled, because of course they are. "Digg texted me last night, said you got kicked out of your house. Um. I'm really sorry about that. By the way."

Sara shrugs, apparently choosing the "ignore it and it won't be awkward" route. "You brought me clothes?" she asks, digging through the backpack. "That's really nice."

Felicity smiles again, nodding to acknowledge Oliver's grateful look, exchanged over Sara's bent head. "Yeah, well. I know you keep most of your stuff in that one duffel, and you left it at your parents' place - or at least, I guessed that you probably did, given the circumstances." She shrugs, looking a little bashful. "We're about the same size, I think. The jeans might not fit very well, but a t-shirt's a t-shirt, right?"

Sara pulls out a bright pink shirt with a gigantic white daisy on the front, holding it up to her chest. "This just screams 'Sara Lance,'" she says dryly.

Felicity breaks into surprised laughter. "I thought so," she says.

"Thanks." Sara shakes her head with a small grin.

"If you need anything else, I can get it for you," Felicity goes on to offer. "Which, tangentially, I should mention that somebody leaked the news last night, and your face is literally all over the news right now. Oliver, you too."

"Well, we knew that was coming," he replies, resigned. "Did you - "

"Yes, and no, he doesn't think you should make a statement." Felicity purses her lips and points towards her computer bay. "I sent you most of the prevalent ones this morning, you can look through it when you have the time. Quentin wants to talk to you too, when you get a chance."

Sara's expression darkens slightly, and she throws a glance toward her cell phone, dead and dark on the desk. Quentin had called a dozen times last night. Sara ignored all of them.

"Thank you," Oliver says gratefully. Felicity has this tendency, to show up when he least expects her with all of his problems already indexed and color coded by priority, plus four more he hasn't anticipated yet, complete with commentary and a strongly worded opinion. "Seriously. For everything."

Felicity nods slowly, acknowledging the double meaning. "Of course," she says, just as layered. "And," she says to Sara, "I'm glad you're alright. With the - poison, and stuff. That was scary."

Sara nods, looking between her and Oliver calmly. She's still holding the daisy shirt. Oliver thinks it'll probably look beautiful on her, if she were ever brave enough to try it on.

"You can stay with me if you need to, by the way," Felicity continues. "I have a spare bedroom! Well. It's full of boxes right now, and a treadmill...that I don't use. But underneath all that, there's a bed. I think. Possibly it's a futon, I seriously haven't been in there since 2011, soo…"

"I can deal with a futon," Sara says genially. "I might take you up on that, actually."

"Might be a better idea than staying with me," Oliver says thoughtfully. "Would make things easier with...everything."

"Right, with…" Felicity trails off abruptly when Oliver turns to look at her, giving her an eyebrow. "Yeah, just gonna cut myself off right there."

"Thank you," he says.

"We'll figure something out," Sara says, with the same finality that she'd said, _my family is danger,_ and _I can't stay._ "Assuming you guys will need my help from time to time - "

"Of course," Oliver rebukes.

Sara leans back in Felicity's chair and blinks, once, twice. The clothes on her lap shake a little as she jiggles her knee.

"Then I guess we're doing this," she replies finally, and grabs one of the coffee cups, like a punctuation mark.

"Cool," Felicity says.


End file.
